Remember all the fuss in 1997 when Jerry Springer, TV's pioneering ringmaster of the grotesque, was appointed part-time commentator on WMAQ-Ch. 5? We had a long, loud, handwringing civic tantrum about how unserious Springer was; how tawdry and unfit for a dignified broadcast.

And though he was gone after just two commentaries, the station's respected 10 p.m. co-anchors, Carol Marin and Ron Magers, left the station in protest as fast as they could.

Yet there's been very little fuss about the announcement that veteran radio talk-jock Muller is now appearing as a pinch hitter for regular, weekly WTTW-Ch. 11 commentator Debra Pickett.

This is true even though the program he will appear on, "Chicago Tonight," where Carol Marin is an occasional segment host, is a fundamentally more serious, unique, important and ambitious show than Channel 5's newscast was a decade ago.

And even though Muller is twice as infantile, offensive and metastatically degrading as Jerry Springer ever was.

Before the FCC crackdown, Muller probably led the broadcast nation in poo-poo, peenie and breast jokes.

"My" side won big yesterday in the Chicago City Council when the so-called big-box ordinance passed by a veto-proof majority. By 35-14, aldermen OK'd the idea that mega retailers ought to pay their employees a higher minimum wage than other businesses.

I say "my" side because I wrote strongly in favor of it on Tuesday. But I came very late to my views on the issue and, as my column on the topic pointed out, I based those views on anecdotal evidence from semi-similar situations and a once-over of the history of disputes between business and labor.

But am I sure that this new law -- assuming it leaps parliamentary hurdles and survives court challenges -- will be good for Chicago, even good for the people its proponents are aiming to help? No.

At long last, the Chicago City Council has become good theater once again: real passion, serious debate, even a little mystery about how things will turn out.

From the recent squabbles over honorary street signs, smoking in restaurants and the horrors of foie gras, to Wednesday's grand wrangle over the so-called big-box ordinance, aldermanic gatherings are worth watching for the first time since the late 1980s.

So let us watch, already.

Local legislative bodies everywhere show their meetings on cable TV or the Internet.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Now that police in Indiana have arrested a 17-year-old boy in the
recent downstate freeway shootings along that state's major highways (the reported shooting
in Hammond this morning is still more of a mystery), life can return to normal.

It was telling, though, how easily an apparently (and allegedly)
lone weirdo with a rifle was able to create the rumblings of
widespread, incapacitating anxiety of the sort that organized terrorists strive to
instill in the public.

For instance, before the annoucement this afternoon of the arrest, I
would have seriously considered re-routing or canceling if my travel
plans were taking me down Interstate 65 to Indianapolis.

The rational, even correct answer to this would have been, "Oh,
come on, what are the odds? Are you going to live your life cowering at
home at the highly remote possibility that some nut/copycat/terrorist
is going to target you?"

But terrorism--whether organized and purposeful or not -- exploits
the fact that people don't respond rationally to unfamilar threats and
unusual dangers, no matter how small.

Remember the panic over anthrax in the mail shortly after the 9/11
attacks? The long era, now mercifully over, when security agents
confiscated nail clippers from airline passengers?

Better safe that sorry is what we tell ourselves. Even though time often makes that mantra sound foolish, is it true?

Growing up in Ann Arbor, I came to disdain the annual street art fair that clogs the area around campus and downtown every summer, in the same way that many native Chicagoans disdain the Taste of Chicago:

Too popular, too middlebrow, too disruptive, too pricey. I worked at a bookstore in the heart of the fair in 1976 and had not returned -- had, in fact, tried to avoid street art fairs as much as possible-- until last weekend when a family trip to Ann Arbor happened to coincide with the last day of the fair.

I put on my attitude and my sunscreen and went down for a sentimental trip down cynical lane, Johanna at my side dreading my predictable intonations of "oh, come on, that's not art!"

Organized opponents are afraid of Chicago's so-called "big box" ordinance, and for good reason:

They
are warning that if the City Council passes and Mayor Richard Daley
signs a new wage and benefits law requiring stores larger than 90,000
square feet to pay their employees at least $10 an hour and $3 in
benefits by July 2010, retail giants such as Target and Wal-Mart will
flee the city, particularly the underdeveloped communities they are
considering. now eyeing.

Jobs and shoppers will head to the suburbs,
according to a talking-points memo from the Illinois Retail Merchants
Association, costing the city tens of millions of dollars a year in
property and sales tax revenue, and denying our poorest and least
mobile residents easy access to employment and bargains.

Perversely,
they warn, a proposal to help the less advantaged will end up harming
them as well, along with the big bad merchandisers who supposedly
exploit them.

But that's not what they're really afraid of.

What they're really afraid of is that their dire predictions won't come true.

To try to defend his unpatriotic misrepresentations as just par for the course in a nation which values dissent…ignoring that we are in a war for our survival where all of us should watch our language…would be the height of incredulity.... His abject, slash and burn partisanship is the scourge of the Senate.... Durbin is probably the nation’s most obvious national security risk:...The record shows clearly that Senator Durbin’s irascible and viciously partisan behavior threatens the lives of American troops ... The censure of Richard Durbin would show that the tolerance of the American people with unreasoning demagoguery that puts our troops and this nation in grave danger--a far worse offense than Joe McCarthy committed in his most excessive hour--is not unlimited.

Callers to Roeser's WLS AM 890 radio program last night were in favor of the idea by something like 3 to 1; several said they favored hanging Durbin.

Now, I really don't care to get into debating whether Durbin's criticisms of the conduct of the "war on terror" or of our soldiers at Gitmo crosses the line that separates spirited dissent in the grandest American tradition from treason.

I'm more interested in the tactical dimensions of such an effort: Is it smart politics? Does attempting to censure a politician for an expression of views -- no matter how much you disagree with them -- quell opposition and generate national unity? Or does it serve further to divide us?

I invite you to click below to read my views on Internet petitions and on what Dick Durbin should have said last year when called upon to apologize for his remarks about Gitmo:

•Just about every word I know ending in "--ectomy" is redolent with alarm, sorrow and perhaps tragedy. Mastectomy, appendectomy and hysterectomy are the first that come to mind. Tonsillectomy and vasectomy are less fraught words, but still don't leave me feeliing settled (is there a list of all such words on the Web? Of course!).

So I was brought up short Friday driving on Stony Island Avenue to see a billboard for Snickers candy bars with featuring a doctored logo reading "Hungerectomy."

I get it. A Snickers bar removes your hunger as effectively as a surgical procedure removes diseased or unwanted tissue from the body. But the word does not put me in the mood to buy a candy bar.

It's hard to think of other word endings or suffixes that are less appetizing, but I open up to readers the opportunity to think of Snickers' campaigns that were rejected before they settled on "Hungerectomy."

• As a newspaper person I applaud Ikea's strategy of delivering its 2007 home-furnishings catalog Sunday to desirable readers by including it in the home-delivery bag for the Tribune.

As a word guy, though, I feel some dismay about the description of the finish on the Aneboda series of chests of drawers on page 221: "Birch effect," it says. Not "birch. " Not "birch veneer." But "birch effect."

Again I invite readers to submit suggestions for descriptive terms that Ikea rejected before settling on "Birch effect." Aneboda can play.

• And as a middle-aged slob, I'm of a mixed mind about Old Navy's line of "broken in" polo shirts. We were shopping for the kids at Old Navy the other day and I browsed over to the racks and started thumbing through the garments.

When I first noticed a badly frayed collar on a shirt, I tsked inwardly about the poor quality control. When I noticed the shirt underneath the damaged shirt had similar rips and tears, I wondered if Old Navy had a moth problem in the warehouse.

But when I noticed the proud label reading, "Broken-in...a few scrapes, a frayed edge, maybe a nick," I experienced the same fuddy-duddy moment of realization that earlier generations of clueless old timers must have experienced when it dawned on them that, hey, the holes in those jeans are supposed to be stylish!

The good news for me is that I have several shirts--polo and tee--that I've been about to pitch out or use as rags, but which fashion trends have suddenly made new again.

The bad news is that there's not much more pathetic than a guy closing in on 50 who appears to be affecting the styles of trendy guys in their 20s. For instance, the gray-haired gents who grew ponytails back when ponytails on men were the thing.

To look like a striver, a Peter Pan seems worse, on balance, than looking like a careless, somewhat dissolute person who, like an urban troll who dwells under the expressway, really no longer cares what his clothes look like so long as they keep him warm and basically covered.

Friday, July 21, 2006

The Sunday version of my column has a feature labeled "Posted!" in which I excerpt snippets of well-turned phrases left here by my estimable readers. The following, which was posted this morning, is far, far too long to include in that feature, but it's too good not to highlight.

I will preface this by saying that I don't know the anonymous author and am not vouching for any of the facts he reports. Assume, if you want, that it's fiction -- it remains evocative and powerful:

(UPDATE -- I now have a very good fix on the anonymous author of this piece; all I can say is that I can vouch for his skills as a journalist and his knowledge of the law and I understand his need to remain anonymous)

Posted by: GJO'L | Jul 21, 2006 8:07:54 AM

To the poster above (Giudi | Jul 20, 2006 3:09:03 PM) who suggested that we might learn something by going to the monthly Police Board meeting and hearing people trying to tell their stories of police abuse: I took you up on your suggestion last night. And I learned a few things, but perhaps not what you were expecting:

Thursday, July 20, 2006

A near West Side church has had to change the ringing of its bells after some complaints from neighbors, but others said traffic is the main noisemaker....The St. Cantius Church's bells used to begin ringing at 6 a.m., and then ring on the quarter hour until 11 p.m. However, since two neighbors complained, the church reached a compromise with environmental officials, and now the bells are silenced at 9 p.m.

Puts me in mind of one of the best (certainly oddest) columns I've ever written:

Supporters of Ald. Todd Stroger (8th) were quick to play the “Bernie Epton” card at reports and rumblings that a major Democratic voter rebellion was in the works over his candidacy for the presidency of the Cook County Board.

Our unscientific click poll shows so far that 72 percent of those who identify themselves as generally leaning Democratic say they plan to cross party lines and vote for Stroger’s Republican opponent, Commissioner Tony Peraica, on Nov. 7.

“These `Democrats" are the same `Democrats’ who brought a clown like Bernard Epton within a cat-hair of defeating Harold Washington in 1983,” declared Darryl Mitchell, a frequent pro-Stroger contributor to the message boards.

“Peraica is a modern day Bernie Epton,” wrote “Tim H.,” another who weighs in often.

Bernard Epton was not a racist – - he was a moderate Republican who’d represented an integrated Hyde Park district in the General Assembly. But he had the misfortune of being embraced by racists 23 years ago when he ran against Harold Washington, the first African American mayor of Chicago.

In certain, traditionally Democratic, white ethnic neighborhoods of Chicago, Epton outpolled Washington 15 to 1. It’s safe to say that those voters understood Epton’s slogan “Before it’s too late” as a call to those hoping to stop blacks taking over City Hall, and not as the warning against a pending fiscal collapse he said it was until his dying day in 1987.

But to try to equate, in advance, Democrats who’ll vote for Peraica with the bigots who nearly put Epton into office is unfair and dangerously confrontational.

Many of these same Democrats voted for Stroger’s father as County Board president three times and boosted into office such other African American candidates as Secretary of State Jesse White, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, former Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.

Rightly or wrongly, rebellious Dems see Todd Stroger vs. Tony Peraica not as black vs. white, but as party hack vs. reformer. The insinuation that that point of view is racist is a sure way to harden their hearts and divide the party.

I took immediately to Sudoku puzzles and then, a few weeks later, almost as immediately, grew bored and stopped doing them.

The sameness of the task wore on me as well as, I admit, the frustration of being unable to recover from routine errors.

....so that square has to be a six, but that square also has to be a six and they're in the same row, so now what???

Something else, too, though I didn't put my finger on it until the other day when the blogger Austin Mayor called my attention to "Solve Sudoku (Without even thinking!)" a Web site that shows why Sudoku is, in the end, a tediously repetitive challenge that can -- must -- be solved with a series of rote, mechanical tasks that require computer-like logic but don't call upon experience, intuition or knowledge and are never notably fun, clever or foxy.

Most basic Sudoku puzzles require nothing more than painstakingly following a few methodical steps. The harder ones require more steps but, ultimately, following steps, erasing numbers and trying options solves the puzzle. In that way it's just a brute-force job that never really changes-- like solving a Rubik's Cube or a word-find puzzle. Sure there are tricks. Sure you can get better at it. But after a while...

My prediction: Because of this fundamental blandness, the Sudoku fad will burn out in few years. It won't go away, but it will be identified with this era.

Before you tell me I just don't understand how wonderful Sudoku is and why it's bound to last as long and be as eternally popular as crossword puzzles, ready the forum attached to the above link and then check out Sudoku helper and Sudoku for beginners, at which the solving technique is automated.

For $6 million, I expected a far more vigorous use of the thesaurus than I
heard during news conference Wednesday morning at which special prosecutors
presented the results (.pdf) of a four-year investigation into allegations that Chicago
police tortured suspects from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s.

Instead, the most memorable fragment of rhetoric from the event was chief
deputy special state’s attorney Robert Boyle’s declaration, "We reflect in the
report on what we believe was a bit of a slippage in the (Cook County) State’s
Attorney’s Office at the time of the (Andrew) Wilson case."

Wilson killed two police officers in 1982 and was sadistically worked over
during interrogations by an Area 2 police crew led by the now infamous Cmdr. Jon
Burge. That beating ultimately proved a window into numerous others incidents,
but information about it was brushed off at the time by then States Atty. and
now Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.

I faithfully follow (and every so often participate in) media round-table broadcasts and consider myself something of a connoisseur of radio and TV punditry.

So the other day I got to wondering: If I got to pick four local gasbags (I mean the term affectionately) for a regular "McLaughlin Group"-like panel to dissect a wide variety of state and local issues, whom would I choose?

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

This past week, Y.A. Turtle, one of my aunt's beloved pets pictured here in 1987, died. He was 40- something, and was named for Yelberton Abraham (Y.A.) Tittle, the NFL Hall-of-Fame quarterback who retired in 1964.

I know what you're thinking. Big deal. It's a turtle. Not exactly a child, friendly dog or even smug, unaffectionate cat. But you know what? My aunt loves her turtles, takes care of them every day and shares life with them in what, to her, is a meaningful way. She's been having some tough times lately and losing what amounts to an old friend is a genuine blow and occasion for sorrow. My sympathies are genuine.

Can you relate?

Have you ever lost a non-traditional, non-cuddly pet and felt an ache that no one else understood?

I haven't, but probably because, when I was a kid, I took such indifferent care of my temporary pets that they didn't survive long enough to become griefworthy.

About "Change of Subject."

"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
More about Eric Zorn

Contributing editor Jessica Reynolds is a 2012 graduate of Loyola University Chicago and is the coordinator of the Tribune's editorial board. She can be reached at jreynolds at tribune.com.